Citation Hygiene Skill

Business documents run on unsourced confidence: "studies show," "industry-standard," the market-size number nobody can trace, the chart with no as-of date. Each unsourced load-bearing claim is a small loan against credibility — called in the moment a skeptic asks "says who?" in front of the room. Citation hygiene is not academia: it's the practical discipline that every claim someone might challenge or act on carries its source, the link actually contains the claim (the classic drive-by cite doesn't), numbers wear their dates, and claims that can't be sourced get softened or cut before the meeting does it for you.

What This Skill Produces

• The claim audit — the doc's load-bearing claims listed, each: sourced / sourceable / soften / cut
• The fixes — sources attached (verified to contain the claim — the source-triangulation quick check), softenings drafted, the cut list
• The venue format — how citations look here: footnotes for memos, the source line for slides, links for docs
• The norm card — the team's three citation rules, postable

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The document — and its stakes/venue (the board deck's bar differs from the team memo's; both have one)
• Which claims are load-bearing — the ones decisions or credibility rest on; hygiene triages (sourcing every sentence is academia cosplay — sourcing none is the current problem)
• The available sources — where the numbers came from (the analyst's model? a report? memory?) — "memory" is an honest answer that routes to softening
• Internal-data provenance — for internal numbers: which system, what query, as of when — internal claims need internal citations too ("revenue dashboard, July 15" beats "our data shows")